Alibaba And Amazon Back Indian Online Grocery Companies

Alibaba And Amazon Back Indian Online Grocery Companies

BigBasket and Grofers are both set to get investment

Alibaba and Amazon have both announced that they are to back rival ventures, in an attempt to push forward India's online grocery industry. Alibaba announced that it is preparing to purchase a major stake in the Indian online grocer BigBasket. Similarly, Amazon looks set to make a comparable move to invest in rival company Grofers. Grofers is another online grocery seller, and it has backing from the Japanese online company SoftBank. These deals are set to come just as the internet grocery industry explodes in India. According to a study by Morgan Stanley, the country's food and grocery sector will see compounded annual growth of “141% by 2020 to become a 15 billion US dollar market, accounting for 12.5% of the overall retail sales in India”. It also comes just after Amazon completed its 13.7-billion-US-dollar acquisition of Whole Foods Market in the US, with the intent of selling food both domestically and internationally.